Lars Eidinger is on stage, in front of the camera, behind the mixing desk. A conversation about eternal moments and the beauty of the ephemeral.
Mr. Eidinger, you have been extremely productive for many years. As an actor in the cinema and in the theater, as a DJ and as a photographer. Are you someone who is very conscious of your time?
It may appear that way on the outside, but it doesn’t feel like it to me. It’s my job, I’m passionate about it and I’m very happy when I can do it. A good friend of mine once said that you shouldn’t think about time. It drives you crazy. I found that interesting. I think what he’s saying is that time is something we don’t understand and can’t comprehend. Time exceeds our imagination because we only live for a limited time. How are we supposed to be able to imagine that there is something beyond that that we cannot experience or experience at all? I think you shouldn’t see time as a line, but as a point. That’s exactly what I find so beautiful in the film “The Time We Share”. Tim and Joan meet at a point in time. One may wonder how it is possible that the two have a romantic relationship when they are so different in age. But there is a point where they really meet and share. And at the moment when this exchange takes place, it doesn’t matter how old they are.
Because time stands still at the moment?
It may appear so. I think that the moment he declares his love for her, she doesn’t fall in love with him, but with his view of her. This has a narcissistic moment in a positive sense. She feels recognized by him. The Bible says they recognize each other – a synonym for loving each other. But that also means that I make myself known. That I open up and make myself vulnerable. And that’s exactly what happens between the two of them in this film. I found it remarkable how Isabelle Huppert shows up and reveals herself in the game at that moment. As a parting gift, I gave her my photo book and wrote in it that I had the impression that you could meet more intimately in the game than in real life.
Lars Eidinger talks about the art of opening up relentlessly
When you see you and Isabelle Huppert play, you get the feeling that two people understood each other, even outside of the role. Was that so?
To be perfectly honest, I was also surprised at how she perceives me. Because of course I felt the same way as most of the viewers did: Isabelle seems very unapproachable and unattainable at the beginning. When I saw her for the first time, after a theater performance with the Schaubühne in Avignon, about twenty years ago, she was sitting at the table and – I know it sounds like a cliché – she really shone. She wasn’t extraverted, she was completely with herself. She has the ability to turn her inside out, even without words. That’s what’s so impressive about their game. Many then say that she doesn’t play at all, but that’s a mistake. Her playing shows that nothing is everything. If she doesn’t play anything, she plays everything. After filming, I was sometimes asked how she was private. I then always advised to watch the films with her. Because that’s where she shows herself to be the complex personality she is.
We’re talking about Isabelle Huppert instead of you, which is exactly what I wanted to avoid.
For real? When I talk about Isabelle Huppert, I’m also talking about myself. I already did that during the Berlinale, in my speech in honor of her. Because as much as you can admire her – her greatest quality is that you recognize yourself in her.
What do you mean?
It has to do with the fact that she often plays characters that have a destructive side, that have something destructive, also self-destructive and flawed about them, and I think we recognize ourselves in that. It’s strange how much we grew up with film heroes and film heroines and how little these heroes and heroines have to do with us. We’re not. We are full of mistakes and mistakes. There is a longing for something heroic, but it remains utopian, it is much more enriching to recognize oneself in a character. This increases the degree of reflection. When you see Isabelle in “The Piano Player” you suddenly startle at your own grimace. You look in like in a mirror.
There’s a moment in The Time We Share when you’re looking directly at the camera. It’s like a shock. They radiate an enormous vulnerability. Something bare. That’s very touching.
Oh thank you.
“You see in me your own hurt. That’s actually the noble goal of the game.”
But didn’t Brecht – whom you also played once – say that it’s wrong to be moved if you don’t move?
I’m a big Brecht fan. He has this credo: “Don’t stare so romantically!” By that he meant that one shouldn’t look at what’s happening on stage or on the screen in a romantically glorified way, but rather analytically. And of course it’s a Brechtian moment when I’m looking straight into the camera, because it confronts the viewer directly and calls the illusion into question. Brecht wants an analytical view, but experience has shown that it can also be touching. Perhaps one has to differentiate between being touched and being touched. My colleague Gustav Peter Wöhler from “Jedermann” described me as wounded in a documentary about me.
A term from the hunter-speak – a wounded animal.
Right, but the great thing about a moment of empathy like you describe is that it’s not about me. You see your hurt in me. And that is actually the noble goal of the game. When I really show and open up, it leads to viewer empathy for the character. Then everyone has the opportunity to recognize themselves in a character.
How long does a role like that of desperate, alcoholic writer Tim Ardenne stay with you?
There is a great performance by the artist Erwin Wurm, where he put people’s entire clothing on. And then they stand there and have on all the things that they own. That’s how I feel about the roles. In a way, I don’t discard them anymore, but they make me more complex as a personality. I don’t see dealing with them as an effort, but as an enrichment. I really long to slip into these characters because it makes me grow, change.
Are there characters that are closer to you than others?
I always have a hard time when I’m asked who I’m playing, who you’re dealing with. Because that limits the characters. Fiction is often expected to come up with coherence and logic, but life is far more intangible. Art tries to bring life into a form, and in doing so, it actually limits it.
“A personality moves. That is also my claim – to change myself permanently”
Can you explain that?
I just did a project about Piet Mondrian. There is a text by him in which an art critic, an abstract painter and a representational painter converse. And there is the sentence: “Everything that divides has ceased to be.” An interesting thought that assignment and classification describe an end. I understood that personality is something that moves and changes. And that’s also what I aspire to now, that I want to change permanently. I don’t want to stand for this or that. I want to be as open to change as possible. In my opinion, the culture of discussion, the way we conduct debates at the moment, is suffering from the fact that positions are hardening and that it is only about categories such as victory or defeat and not about convincing the other party or oneself to be persuaded.
Lars Eidinger and getting older
Let’s talk about time again. When we met seven years ago, you talked about the fear of decay, of aging. How is it now that you’re older? Do you still think, as you did then, that the old just dies and the young has the most arguments for life?
I know it’s a funny analogy, don’t get me wrong: I used to get mad conflict out of the fact that things wear out. I had a thing that was new and beautiful, and all of a sudden it got a scratch. But at some point you realize that these are the principles of our consumer society. Cell phones are protected with cases that are almost as expensive as the cell phone itself, painted bumpers are replaced after a scratch. Things that last are not lucrative from a capitalist point of view. That means: Of course we are suggested that what is old has to be replaced and is no longer of any value. You can transfer that to the body. Advertising suggests that a wrinkled body or face is no longer desirable. In contrast, in Japanese – and this culture also plays a large role in the film – there is a term for the value that something acquires from being used. And that goes against our ideas. With us, the used loses its value.
Cinema, TV and streaming ignore the elderly. Is it also “used”?
Life has left its mark on an old person. And that can also be understood as a great beauty. But that requires maturity. For that you have to deal with impermanence. Coming back to your question about dealing with time: The fact that time passes steadily is difficult for any human being to bear. And yet it also results in a form of eroticism or sensuality. Consider the gesture of giving cut flowers. Giving someone a potted plant doesn’t have the same sensual quality as cut flowers. Cut flowers experience their quality in that they are actually already gone, because they have already been separated. And so I try to see that the beauty of life comes only through death. The desire for eternal life contradicts life. Because life is finite, and that’s the beauty of it. And that’s actually how it is with every moment.
In the past you often spoke of your fear of death. Has that changed?
At some point I realized that this fear of death is not my fear at all, but the fear of death at any moment. Death at any moment is much harder to bear because you have to live with it. While the end of life really means the end. You’re exposed to decay all the time, it’s a question of how you deal with it. Whether you manage to discover a quality in it or whether you despair.
You are the father of a daughter. What is it that you really want to convey to your child?
For a long time I could not imagine having a child, and now I cannot imagine life without this child. But it is a mistake to think that a child is the result of what I put into it. A child is never the result of its upbringing. A child is a completely independent personality. And at some point it turns around. Even if you have tried to give the children support and want to be an authority for them in a positive sense. But I learn a lot more from my daughter than she does from me.
You exposed yourself very heavily on social networks for a while, but have since unsubscribed from Instagram. How did this retreat come about?
The artist Liv Strömquist published the graphic novel “Im Spiegelsaal” last year. In it, she also describes the phenomenon of self-destruction that social media stars develop at a certain level. They begin to destroy the image they have built of themselves. Instagram is all about building an image of yourself. I don’t compare myself to these people, but I’ve noticed that I no longer see myself in this image, which you’re responsible for yourself. People think they know you, no longer approach you with an open mind and start to judge you.
Have you become a target?
There were several shitstorms. The standard sentence in the posts was then: “I’m disappointed with that.” The other person succumbs to the deception. It saw something in me that I have no control over. I have not actively deceived anyone. The need to communicate is inherent in my job, but in certain areas it takes away from me. I’m giving something away from me. American Natives didn’t want to be photographed because they believed it would destroy their souls. And I understand that now. I don’t want to give away my soul, I also want to protect myself. I would never allow photos to be taken in my home. It’s a sanctuary, and if I allow someone to say something about it, then I lose the apartment as a retreat.
To person
Lars Eidinger, born in 1976, is considered one of the most influential German actors. He attended the Ernst Busch Academy of Dramatic Arts in Berlin. In 1998 he made his debut at the Deutsches Theater; at the Berlin Schaubühne he became known for his roles in Shakespeare plays such as “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”, “Hamlet” and “Richard III”.
He is particularly attracted to expressive and extreme characters. He made his breakthrough in German cinema in 2009 in Maren Ade’s “All Others”. He became internationally known through the films “The Clouds of Sils Maria” and “Personal Shopper”, he played in the cinema hit “25 km/h”, series roles in “Tatort” and in the series “Babylon Berlin”. He has received numerous awards for his performances, such as the Grimme Prize and the German Film Critics’ Prize.
With exhibitions of his photo and video works and the publication of an illustrated book, he has also made a name for himself as an artist.
The film “The Time We Share” has been in German cinemas since Thursday.
The place you need just because you show yourself so much?
Yes, it’s a paradox. The way I see my job, I make myself very vulnerable just by the way I’m portrayed. I show myself unprotected in emotional moments. Even if it’s a craft: It’s a craft that I master in order to get into the emotion.
Do you cry real tears on stage and in front of the camera?
There is a sentence in Lars Norén’s play “Dämonen”: The cynical man I play says to a woman: You have something very special, you cry when you’re sad. For me that means: It is incredibly important to express your feelings. If you can’t do that, it leads to depression. If you don’t manage to communicate, you carry things around with you and don’t know where this heaviness comes from. The older I get, the greater my need to communicate. You can learn a lot from the next generation. She insists on being able to express herself without being judged immediately. This is the only way to really get into an exchange.
Interview: Christina Bylow
